What was life like in the 80s?

[Strangerthanadeadting]

As a recent fan of Stranger Things and having only been four years old at the end of the eighties, I'm fascinated to know what life was like for teens & adults back then.

It's depicted as being so much fun on TV. So colourful, the music is brilliant, the fashion so vivid. It was a time before the Internet, social media, plastic surgery, the Kardashians.

I'm fascinated. I'd love to hear what life was like. What people did for fun, what they ate, how different a working day was, if it really was as glamorous as it looks, if the hairstyles took forever, what people thought the future would be like? Was it a better life? A better time?

I was still a student nurse in 1980. It was fantastic, living in a nurses home with mates, we were mostly on the wards training, we got paid! Nightclubs were great. I never had a perm, at the start I still had a 'Purdy', then a very sharp bob. I was a bit old for all the ra ra skirts and stuff but I had some pretty cool outfits, jumpsuits or 'flying suits' featured pretty heavily in the early 80s.

By the end of the decade I was married with 3 children and an astronomical interest rate on the mortgage, but luckily we were never unemployed although I moved on from nursing. It was still very sexist at work and maternity provision was nothing like it is now but when you had a baby they did look after you in hospital and men didn't have free access to the ward like they do now. You stayed in hospital for a few days even after a perfectly straightforward delivery 'for a rest' and to establish breastfeeding.

The same as it is now, with less gadgets.
There were good bits, music, etc.
The very real threat of nuclear war and high unemployment were the downsides.

My parents moved from the North East of England to the South East in the early 1980s, my DF was lucky enough to have a job in the ship building industry which could be done away from the shipyards. As an adult I am now very aware that many others didn’t have that option.

I remember going back home to visit relatives and having to drive past all the police vans which were waiting as back up or relief shifts to put down the striking miners. The North East was badly hit by the pit closures, the shipyard closures and was not an easy place to live. Again, adult POV tells me why we always travelled home with a bag of clothes I’d outgrown, to be given to family.

However, I remember the excitement of my school getting a computer, 1 which lived on a trolley and each class got it once a fortnight. You could play a maths game on it! I was goggle-eyed at the computer room at secondary school- 12 computers in 1 room (1987). Printing using a dot-matrix printer onto stupid sized paper!

Music- more end of the decade for me: Bros, Madonna, early dance stuff and rap by 1989.

Weddings were either in church, or a cheap lowkey registry office affair. If you were divorced you couldn't remarry in the C of E, but some nonconformist churches allowed it. I think they started allowing weddings in stately homes at some point in the 80s, but only a minority did that. The idea of a symbolic ceremony combined with register office wedding dismissed as the "legal bit" was unheard of.
Not many had separate evening parties after the wedding. The bride and groom going away straight after the afternoon reception for the honeymoon was still a thing, with a special Going Away Outfit for the bride. This did change towards the end of the decade. You only had a few bridesmaids, and they were always unmarried. Wedding cake was always fruit. The wedding was usually paid for by the bride's parents. Not all couples lived together before marriage, and almost none had children first.

No women vicars; some female clergy in some nonconformist denominations, but few and far between. More people attended church (Sunday School for kids).

Mortgages became easier to get as the decade went on. Usually you could borrow 3x salary as a single person, 3 x one person's salary and 1 x the other's for a couple, based on the expectation that the wife would be giving up work once babies came along. There was great angst over rising house prices, especially in London, but they seem cheap compared to today ;) Buy to let was not a thing - private landlords existed but I don't think they could get mortgages on new properties.

Income tax reduced and was simplified over the decade. Taxes on alcohol, petrol, cigarettes, etc increased over the same period. Import duties were paid on goods from the EU, including things brought back on holiday.

Local government was funded directly by the rates, which were charged based on the property's value, with no cap for the top-end properties. State schools were all run by the council, no academies.

And there were always loads of punks in town. Proper big, spikey hair punks with studded denim or leather jackets. Not seen a punk in ages.

I grew up in a mining town. It was a difficult and worrying time to be a teenager. I felt like we were at war with the Government.

I'm from the north west, my immediate memories of the 80s are of recessions and struggle (Boys from the Black Stuff) being told at school not to give up on the idea of finding a job, miners strike etc. I now live in Norfolk and have been surprised by just how differently people down here perceive the 80ss

The north/south divide used to be much more stark, Manchester and Liverpool are entirely different entities now.

Agree with pp that being gay was much harder. Even into the 90s I was working with people who felt it wasn't safe to be out at work.

Pop music was ubiquitous, if you wanted something different (ie good) you had to know the right record shops to go to, the right pubs and clubs, where to get the right fanzines etc. No internet to just look things up.

This is a nuclear war leaflet my local council printed off in the 1980s and distributed to every house.

Some halls of residence had shared rooms, and definitely no en suites
Oh yes! Ours had 12 bedrooms to one communal bathroom and the shower just had a curtain so people thought it hilarious to whip it open when you were naked. 🤔 Luckily no mobile phones!

It's not exactly cheery stuff!

We didn't have as many "things". Life was less pressurised. Everything was just at a slower pace. The 80's were a great period to grow up in.

My life reflected Cold Feet. Every life stage they went through was at exactly the same time as me.

Interesting to read the varied experiences - it very much seems to be divided between children/teens and adults as to whether the 80's were carefree or stressful.
I married near the beginning of the decade so my memories are of mortgage queues, arranging our wedding, and then learning to live with Dh (didn't live together before marriage) and working hard to pay the bills who h seemed to be constantly increasing. I earned £1900pa when I got married, increased to £2900 by the time I left work to have dc1 at the end of the decade. I had no entitlement to mat leave as I had not worked at that employer for two years by the time I left.
Dh and I managed to avoid redundancy, but many friends and family went through that.
I remember seeing and buying my first ready meal - lasagne from Tesco. All our furniture apart from our bed, was secondhand. We had a black and white TV. No video recorder until about 1985. We didn't go out much or have many holidays because our money was needed to pay the bills. Going out generally meant visiting friends or family for a meal and them coming to us next week.
I remember IRA bombings seemed to be a constant feature of the news and especially remember someone returning to work after lunch in tears because the Lyn home edition of the Evening News was reporting the Hyde Park Bomb. Sad days.
Although the 1980's were tough in many ways, there were a lot of lighter, happier moments as well. DH and I do look back on them happily, as they hold a lot of good memories for us - our wedding and the start of our family.

TV was limited compared to today - only three channels at the start of the decade. So people tended to watch the same stuff, at the same time. Viewing figures for the top shows were astronomical compared to today. BBC didn't broadcast through the night. There were some great sitcoms, and US imports were popular. Most people only had one TV. There was a cheaper licence if you only had a black and white TV, which a few still did. Later in the decade Channel 4, which was new and radical; then satellite TV.

Also a limited selection of radio channels. The BBC had the only national stations. Independent radio was all local. TV and radio listings were proprietary - you had to buy the Radio Times, which had the BBC listings, AND the TV Times, which had ITV and later C4. When they were deregulated, and could both print listings for all channels, oddly enough, the price doubled overnight. Newspapers could only prints listings for the same day.

Video recorders became popular over the decade - VHS tapes were the standard. High streets had video shops where you could rent a film on video for the night.

No internet. Mobile phones were rare, expensive and big clunky things - a few people had them for business.

Newspapers were more widely bought. Local papers were published more frequently - some towns and cities had a daily paper still. Story comics were popular - they tended to be divided by gender. Some had photo stories. Paper boys (or girls) delivered papers to people's home by bike. I think you had to be 14 to get a paper round.

Milk was delivered to homes by the milk float, very early in the morning. The milkman also sold eggs. This declined over the 80s as more people shopped in supermarkets. I think glass bottles with foil tops changed to plastic over the decade. Full cream milk was more commonly drunk, although skimmed and semi were available.

Racism and homophobia were acceptable in many circles
Keeping up with the joneses
It being shameful to live on a council estate
Eating out a real luxury
Nothing like the chain coffee shops
Packed lunches for work
Free school meal children being given a ticket and everybody knew they had fsm
No mental health support for teenagers
Children being expected to fit in with the family, they were an obligatory inconvenience and knew it.
Old women going for a shampoo and set weekly
Polyester flowery dresses and pink or purple rinses

I don't remember it being quite as shiny as depicted in Stranger Things - maybe in America, but British shopping centres weren't like Starcourt mall.

The sweets were amazing though. Much better than today. And if you bought a bag of crisps, you paid 10p and they were full up to the top of the bag, not half a bag of air like now!
No one worried about health so it was guilt free fundus crispy pancakes and other shit from beejams in our house.
Sunday's were mostly okay for me because I lived in London so there was still stuff to do. There was still that miserable feeling at tea time though when songs of praise came on and you remembered that you hadn't done your homework and it was school tomorrow.
I remember owning bright batwing jumpers and thinking I was going to grow up and be a stockbroker and wear suits with massive shoulder pads. I longed for a dynasty style wardrobe but was a bit too young.
It was hard for a lot of people, including my parents but I remember it as being full of possibility - magazines like Cosmo were telling me that nothing was out of reach for me and I could be anything I wanted.

Roller boots
Bright coloured clothes, makeup and neon socks
Pink frosted lipstick and blue eyeliner and mascara
Big earrings
Lady Di hairstyles with big flicks and lots of hairspray.
Shoulder pads
Dallas and Dynasty glamour on TV
Eastenders started on TV
Only 4 channels on Telly.
Recording the top 40 music charts on a Sunday to play on your walkman the rest of the week.
Going to the park with your mates all day
If you were really lucky, you might get to go on a package holiday to a sunny country
Going to a resteraunt was a very rare treat
Fruit and veg and lots of other household stuff was bought on a Saturday at the town market
Bigger supermarkets and frozen food at Bejams had just started to be a thing.
You could spend a whole Saturday morning in Athena choosing the perfect poster for your bedroom wall.
I remember it as a great time to grow up in, but I think that my parents must have gone to great lengths to shield me. There were significant worries from nuclear war to the Falklands to miner strikes to inflation.

I was a child in the 80s (went to high school in 1990). I remember primary school being so much more fun than it seems now. We did loads of art and in the summer would play rounders all afternoon. Projects took weeks and if we were doing a concert in the church we would practice for months ahead.

My mum was part of a baby sitting circle where you earned points sitting for other people's children so you could 'pay' points to get a sitter for yours. My parents and their friends would hold dinner parties and play mahjong.

We only watched TV when there was something particular on that was worth watching. Sundays there used to be a lot of sport on; cricket, golf, snooker.

I remember talk about the recession and people being out of work but we lived rurally so it felt like it was happening in another world.

Planes were expensive - no bargain airlines, so most people either holidayed in the UK, or drove over on a ferry, mainly to France.

Freddy Laker would disagree. And Dan air AKA Dan Dare airlines.

But people did get buses from the UK to Spain via the channel. Some even travelled on the hovercraft.

I lived in Poland in the mid/late 80s. Chernobyl affected a large chunk of the country - we didn’t buy/eat honey or mushrooms (particularly dried or bottled) as they were thought to be radioactive. Queues for things like toilet paper. Food was seasonal, so only cabbage, potatoes, onions and carrots in the winter. We had a big freezer and used to freeze summer fruit and veg like mad. Solidarnosc with Lech Wałęsa, and the end of the Warsaw Pact, free elections, people being able to keep their passports and travel, not swap them for your ID card when you went away. Inflation, and the old people saying that things were better under Communism.

Shops were shut on Sundays, and no evening opening either. At the start of the decade there were still a lot of independent butchers, bakers, greengrocers, fishmongers - mostly gone by the end of the decade. Supermarkets got bigger. Ready meals began to be produced.

No out of season fruit on sale, eg no raspberries and strawberries all year round.

Choc ices were small and not on sticks. Fewer choices of ice cream flavour/brand; generally a choice of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. If you were lucky there would also be raspberry ripple and mint choc chip.

Coffee was pretty basic - no cappuccinos, americanos, flat whites.

No one picked up their dog's poo.

It was grim here and there. And ok here and there. Lots more poverty than there is now.

YTS

OP if you're enjoying the 1980s depiction in stranger things watch the goldbergs bloody love that show, my kids do too.

I was 20 in 1980 and just started my nurse training.We had accomodation in those days near the hospital for the first year and got paid.
It was a decade with many changes.
We didn't all have televisions,phones were at the end of the road.We had friends that we saw often,pubs were much more of a meeting place than now.
I bought a house,it needed a lot doing to it and apart from a few stick of second hand furniture nothing.I had too spruce it up and get a lodger when interest rates went through the roof.
There was a lot of unemployment but in the late 80s consumerism really seemed to ramp up.
I moved to London in the late 80s and the mood was more buoyant,apart from the IRA bombings.
The music was great.Fashion!Peasant skirts at the begining then the shoulder pads where your shirt would have pads,and your jumper and in winter with a coat on there was significant build up.
We had less clothes and they were expensive and lasted.Fashions had a slower turn around and we saw the return of frosted eye make up,coloured mascara and some truly aweful hair styles.Clothes were s lot more colourful too early on.
A big decade but then I was in my 2Os and having fun.
Oh,and the wine bar was invented so a different meeting place and wine became more of a thing to drink.

I don't think it's been mentioned. Sony Walkman. First music on the go via headphones.

And pleats, sharp formal pleats in dresses and skirts.

University in 1980 was not widespread; by 1989 everyone needed a degree.

Aerobics - on breakfast tv and the Green Goddess turning up at railway stations

The F Plan Diet